Out congressmembers Barney Frank, Tammy Baldwin, and Jim Kolbe
are circulating a letter urging their congressional colleagues not
to support the proposed anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. Their
letter,
reports the Boston Globe, quotes Vice President Dick Cheney
from his VP debate in 2000 against Joe Lieberman, when Cheney said
that ''people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship
they want to enter into,'' and added:
''That matter [marriage] is regulated by the states. -- I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that's appropriate. I don't think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area.''
The letter signed by Frank, Baldwin, and Kolbe argues that
lawmakers should reject the constitutional amendment as an
intrusion on states' rights: The Globe reports:
''While we acknowledge that we do not find ourselves in complete agreement with the Vice President on all public policy issues,'' the letter said, ''we believe that [Cheney's statement], given one month before the presidential election, makes a very strong case against a Constitutional amendment which would establish precisely `a federal policy' of the sort that the Vice President opposed.'
Of course, one could question the last time Barney Frank had a kind word for federalism, but that would be churlish.
Interestingly, the anti-gay group Focus on the Family, when
denouncing the letter on its website under "Gay Lawmakers
Assail Marriage Amendment," weakly asserts "Cheney's words
during the debate don't lead everyone to the same
conclusion."
Guess they decided it would be too much of a political hot potato
to take on the VP directly.
In other marriage developments, Virginia's Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Senator George Allen, who is reliably conservative and a member of the Senate Republican leadership, "has taken a separate tack from Majority Leader Bill Frist and has declined to endorse a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage," at least for now. A good sign.
Oh, Politics!
In other congressional news, during the brouhaha between House
Democrats and Republicans over whether a) the Demos were being
obstructionists over a pension reform bill by demanding a line by
line reading and then leaving the room, or b) the GOPers went
bonkers by calling the Capitol police to force the Demos back to
the chamber, the
Washington Post noted that:
one Democratic member of the panel called a Republican colleague "you little fruitcake" in the midst of the standoff.
Finally, ABC News correspondent Jeffrey Kofman's story claiming
low morale among U.S. soldiers in Iraq led, it seems,
to someone in the Bush White House (think gung-ho West Winger) to
have conservative webmeister Matt Drudge link to a story about
Kofman in the Advocate -- a story that reveals the ABC reporter is
both openly gay and a Canadian.
Drudge's link to the
Advocate piece was headlined: "ABC News Reporter Who Filed
Troop Complaint Story is Canadian."
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